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The Responses of American Indian Children to Presbyterian Schooling in the Nineteenth Century: An Analysis through Missionary Sources

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Michael C. Coleman
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Extract

Hundreds of American Indian children attended schools run by the Board of Foreign Missions (BFM) of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) during the nineteenth century. Yet these young Indians left little written evidence from which to reconstruct their responses to an alien educational experience. Presbyterian missionaries, on the other hand, sent detailed reports on the schools and pupils to headquarters in New York. If subjected to careful analysis, the admittedly partisan BFM writings are a rich source for discovering how Indian pupils responded to their teachers and to the whole BFM program.

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Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , Winter 1987 , pp. 473 - 497
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 American Indian Correspondence (AIC), library of the Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS), Philadelphia. The BFM extracted correspondence in its periodicals and Annual Report of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (New York, 1838–93), hereafter AR and year in parentheses. I focused upon four different tribes of the nineteen or so missionized by the BFM: the Choctaws, the Creeks, the Omahas, and the Nez Perces.Google Scholar

2 On Indian children's responses to “uplift” in the nineteenth century: McLoughlin, William G. Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789–1839 (New Haven, Conn., 1984), 59, 62–63, 138–43; Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr., Salvation and the Savage: An Analysis of Protestant Missions and American Indian Response, 1787–1862 (Lexington, Ky., 1965), ch. 3; Adams, David Wallace “The Federal Indian Boarding School: A Study of Environment and Response, 1879–1918” (Ed.D. diss., Indiana University, 1975), chs. 5 and 6; Adams, David Wallace “Schooling the Hopi: Federal Indian Policy Writ Small, 1887–1917,” Pacific Historical Review 48 (Dec. 1979): 347–56; Ahern, Wilbert H. “The Returned Indians': Hampton Institute and Its Indian Alumni, 1879–1893,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 10 (Winter 1983): 101–24; Forbes, Bruce David “John Jasper Methvin: Methodist ‘Missionary to the Western Tribes’ (Oklahoma),” in Churchmen and the Western Indians, 1820–1920, ed. Milner, Clyde A. II, and O'Neil, Floyd A. (Norman, Okla., 1985), 55–61, 64–65; Coleman, Michael C. “The Mission Education of Francis La Flesche: An American Indian Response to the Presbyterian Boarding School in the 1860s,” American Studies in Scandinavia 18 (1986): 67–82. On the twentieth century: McBeth, Sally J. Ethnic Identity and the Boarding School Experience of West-Central Oklahoma American Indians (Washington, D.C., 1983); Bataille, Gretchen M. and Sands, Helen Mullen American Indian Women: Telling Their Lives (Lincoln, Nebr., 1984), ch. 5. On the eighteenth century: James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York, 1985), esp. 204–17; Szasz, Margaret Connell “‘Poor Richard’ Meets the Native American: Schooling for Young Indian Women in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut,” Pacific Historical Review 49 (May 1980): 215–35. First-person accounts: note 38, below.Google Scholar

3 I do not examine the responses of adult Indian students, such as those Nez Perce men taught for the Presbyterian ministry by missionary Sue McBeth: Woman's Work for Woman 10 (July 1880): 224–25, in PHS. Except where otherwise stated, I have treated boys and girls as a group.Google Scholar

4 Coleman, Michael C. Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes toward American Indians, 1837–1893 (Jackson, Miss., 1985), chs. 2, 3, 5–8. On Protestant “uplift”: Berkhofer, Salvation; Bowden, Henry Warner American Indians and Christian Missions: Studies in Cultural Conflict (Chicago, 1981), ch. 5, Milner, and O'Neil, eds., Churchmen, chs. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6. On education, see especially, Hoxie, Frederick E. A Final Promise: The Campaign to Assimilate the Indians, 1880–1920 (Lincoln, Nebr., 1984), 53–70, ch. 6; Prucha, Francis Paul The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln, Nebr., 1984), chs. 5, 27, 32.Google Scholar

5 Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, introduction, chs. 2 (section 4), 7 (section 4). On curricula see, for example, Reid, Alexander to Cooper, D.H. 22 Aug. 1853, box 12, vol. 1, AIC (hereafter 12–1, AIC. Sometimes there is no volume number); Loughridge, Robert M. “History of the Presbyterian Mission Work among the Creek Indians from 1832–1888,” 19, MS in PHS; Burtt, Robert J. Mission, Omaha Annual Report of the Superintendent, 29 Oct. 1861, 4–1, AIC; AR (1861), 8; AR (1888), 21. On teaching Indian languages, for example, Hamilton, William to Dear Brother [Walter Lowrie?], 26 Feb. 1847, in Anderson, Charles A. ed., “More Letters of William Hamilton,” Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 36 (Mar. 1858): 57. On rote learning, for example, Home and Foreign Record 7 (Sept. 1856): 272, in PHS; AR (1857), 23; AR (1861), 8; Ramsay, J. R. Report of Seminole mission, 1880, G, AIC; Docking, Alfred “Educate the Indians: How It Is Being Done among the Choctaws,” Home Mission Monthly 4 (Feb. 1890): 77, in PHS; Francis La Flesche, The Middle Five: Indian Schoolboys of the Omaha Tribe, ed. Baerreis, David A. (Madison, Wis., 1963; originally published in 1900 as The Middle Five: Indian Boys at School), 26–27, 41, 45, 65–66. Quotations, Lowrie, Walter to Dole, W. P. 28 Dec. 1864, A, AIC; AR (1863), 7.Google Scholar

6 AR, (1851), 7; AR (1864), 9; Woman's Work for Woman 1 (July 1886): 155. Also Ainslie, George to Smith, E. P. 17 Feb. 1875, NAIC.Google Scholar

7 Burtt to [Walter Lowrie?], 18 Feb. 1857, 10–2, AIC; Omaha Mission, Annual Report (1861).Google Scholar

8 Sue McBeth, 29 June 1860, and 25 May 1860, in “Diary of a Missionary to the Choctaws, 1860–1861,” ed. Lewis, Anna Chronicles of Oklahoma 17 (Dec. 1939): 437, 435. McBeth later delighted in the Nez Perce appellation pika, “the mother.” Sue McBeth, to Lowrie, John C. and Rankin, William 26 Sept. 1881 F, AIC. See also AR (1856), 22.Google Scholar

9 On health problems, see James B. Ramsey to Walter Lowrie, 25 Nov. 1848, 9–2, AIC; AR (1861), 13; AR (1865), 8. See statement of relief from Spencer Academy: “Not one of our boys died during the year,” AR (1851), 5.Google Scholar

10 Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, 1 16–19; Home and Foreign Record 7 (Sept. 1856): 272; Ainslie, to Smith, E. P. 17 Feb. 1875, N, AIC; Loughridge, “History,” 19. See also Reid, to Cooper, D. H. 22 Aug. 1850, 12–1, AIC; Sturges, Charles to [Lowrie, Walter?], 1 July 1857, 4–2, AIC; Burtt, Omaha Mission, Annual Report (1861).Google Scholar

11 Ainslie, to Smith, E. P. 17 Feb. 1875, N, AIC; Docking, “Educate the Indians,” 77. Omaha boys made “good progress” at talking English, Isaac Black to (?), 14 Mar. 1863, 4–1, AIC. My comment on second language “conversation” classes is based on my own and colleagues’ experience of teaching such classes in Finland.Google Scholar

12 Sturges, to Lowrie, Walter 23 [Nov?] 1858, 4–2, AIC. Also Black, to Lowrie, Walter 2 Mar. 1864, 4–1, AIC; Burtt to [Walter Lowrie?], 8 Jan. 1861, 4–1, AIC; Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, 97–104. For Indian resentment of manual labor see: Bear, Luther Standing My People, the Sioux (1928; Lincoln, Nebr., 1975), 147, 175–76; Axtell, Invasion, 209; Berkhofer, Salvation, 40. Cf. La Flesche, Middle Five, ch. 8.Google Scholar

13 Templeton, William list of the scholars of the Kowetah boarding school, Sept. 1852, 12–2, AIC.Google Scholar

14 “Journal of Irvin, Mr. S. M. “Foreign Missionary Chronicle 10 (May 1842): 141; Hamilton to Dear Brother [Walter Lowrie?], 26 Feb. 1847, in “More Letters,” ed. Anderson, 57; Loughridge, “History,” 19; Burtt, Omaha Mission, Annual Report (1861); AR (1853), 7; Docking, “Educate the Indian,” 78; Sue McBeth, 25 May 1860, “Diary,” 435; AR (1861), 8; Eells, to Wilson, J. L. 31 Aug. 1855, 12–1, AIC. Cf. AR (1855), 9–10.Google Scholar

15 Lowrie, Walter to Dole, W. P. 28 Dec. 1864, A, AIC; Sue McBeth, 25 May 1860, “Diary,” 435. See also Reid, to Cooper, D. H. 22 Aug. 1853, 12–1, AIC; Ainslie to [Walter Lowrie?], 10 July 1852, 12–1, AIC.Google Scholar

16 AR (1863), 7; Stark to John Lowrie, C. 28 Jan. 1884, G, AIC. See also Stark to John Lowrie, C. 27 Feb. 1884, G, AIC; Reid to Walter Lowrie, 17 Mar. 1853, 12–1, AIC; Sturges, to Lowrie, Walter 27 Aug. 1859, 4–2, AIC. Three ex-students of the BFM Chippewa and Ottawa school entered “higher institutions of learning,” AR (1861), 8.Google Scholar

17 On soldiers, Burtt, Annual Report, 1865–66, to Executive Committee of the Presbyterian BFM, A, AIC; Black to Walter Lowrie, 2 Mar. 1864, 4–1, AIC On BFM theology, Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, 33–37. On “feelings,” Burtt, “descriptive catalogue” of students, 1850s, 12–1, letter 180, AIC; “Extract from a Letter of the Rev. McKinney, Edmund 26 Oct. 1847,” Foreign Missionary Chronicle 16 (1848): 8–9, in PHS; Home and Foreign Record 10 (July 1861): 207, in PHS.Google Scholar

18 Burtt, “descriptive catalogue.“Google Scholar

19 For conversions, see note 28, below: AR (1864), 9. See also AR (1861), 14; AR (1862), 8; AR (1882), 10–11; Home and Foreign Record 7 (Sept. 1856): 273; Cf. AR (1893), 123: pupils at the Dakota, (Sioux) mission “invariably” became Christians. Also Ramsey to Lowrie, Walter 16 Aug. 1848, 9–2, AIC; Stark to Bro. [John, C. Lowrie?], 6 Jan. 1883: many of his students were “as good a class of young men as you will find anywhere,” but there was “not as much of the religious element as we would like to see”; Copley on Omaha young men at a night school: “We found them eager to learn, especially branches they could make practical,” Woman's Work for Woman 1 (1886): 155.Google Scholar

20 Reid to Wilson, J. L. 12 Apr. 1854, 12–1, AIC; Templeton, list of scholars. Templeton presumably meant biological parents and did not mention broader kin relationships. Also, Hamilton to Dear Brother [Walter Lowrie?], 26 Feb. 1847, in “More Letters,” ed. Anderson, 56. See also note 32, below.Google Scholar

21 Reid to Walter Lowrie, 6 Jan. 1854, 12–1, AIC; Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, esp. 13–14, 60–62.Google Scholar

22 Ramsey, to Lowrie, Walter 25 Nov. 1848, 9–2, AIC. Interpersonal violence probably intensified after white contact, as alcohol consumption increased and the constraints of the Choctaw clan system broke down. See John Edwards, “The Choctaw Indians in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century,” Chronicles of Oklahoma 10 (Sept. 1932): 397–99. Edwards was a missionary of the BFM; White, Richard The Roots of Dependency: Subsistence, Environment, and Social Change among the Choctaws, Pawnees, and Navajos (Lincoln, Nebr., 1983), 83–86.Google Scholar

23 Reid, to Lowrie, Walter 23 June 1853, and 9 Apr. 1853, 12–1, AIC.Google Scholar

24 Templeton, list of scholars; also comments on Hibben, Samuel Martyn, Henry Toplin, Matilda and Wurt, Martha and on Hodge, David and Williams, Hugh N. for lighter sides of Creek personality; Burtt, “descriptive catalogue.”Google Scholar

25 McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries, 62–63, 138–41; McBeth, Ethnic Identity, 130–31.Google Scholar

26 Ainslie, to Dear Friend [Walter Lowrie?], 10 Aug. 1854, 12–1, AIC. Also, Reid to Wilson, J. L. 10 Aug. 1854, 12–1, AIC; Deffenbaugh, George Quarterly Report from the Nez Perce Mission, 31 Oct. 1881, F, AIC. On the anxiety and guilt provoked by missionary education: McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries, 141–42; Axtell, Invasion, 211–12.Google Scholar

27 Burtt, “descriptive catalogue.“ On identification, Miller, Alice For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence, trans. Hildegarde and Hunter Hannum (London, 1983), esp. 42, 81.Google Scholar

28 AR (1862), 10; AR (1864), 9; Sue McBeth, 17 Apr. 1860, “Diary,” 431; Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, 88–92; Burtt to [Walter Lowrie?], 18 Feb. 1857, 10–2, AIC, and 17 Feb. 1863 4–1, AIC; Reid, to Lowrie, Walter 11 Apr. 1851, 12–1, AIC; Deffenbaugh, to Ellinwood, F. F. 22 Dec. 1885, 2–2, AIC.Google Scholar

29 Irvin, “Journal,“ 141; Burtt, to [Lowrie, Walter?], 14 July 1857, 10–2, AIC; Burtt, “descriptive catalogue.” Cf. Cowley, Henry to Lowrie, John C. 4 June 1872, L-1, AIC; Docking, “Educate the Indians,” 77–78.Google Scholar

30 Docking, “Educate the Indians,“ 77; Reid to Walter Lowrie, 11 Apr. 1851, 12–1, AIC; discussion of La Flesche, in text below. On rank in Indian societies: Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, 53–55, 65–66; Green, Michael D. The Politics of Indian Removal: Creek Government and Society in Crisis (Lincoln, Nebr., 1982), 7–10, 20, 41, 69–72; Flesche, La Middle Five, 11, 35, 127; Fletcher, Alice and Flesche, Francis La The Omaha Tribe, Twenty-Seventh Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1905–6 ([1911]; New York, 1970), 7: 202–16. On parental influence: Burtt, Omaha Mission, Annual Report; Reid, to Wilson, J. L. 12 Apr. 1854, 12–1, AIC; Ramsay, J. R. 1883 report of Seminole mission, G, letter 47, AIC; Ainslie, to Wilson, J. L. 5 July 1860, 10–1, AIC; Flesche, La Middle Five, 127–28. See also Adams, “Federal Indian Boarding School,” 170–91, 200–25.Google Scholar

31 Burtt, “descriptive catalogue.“ There were differences of three to five years in ages of pupils within each of the four divisions of Spencer Academy, Reid, to Cooper, D. H. 22 Aug. 1853, 12–1, AIC. See also Ainslie, to Smith, E. P. 17 Feb. 1875, N, AIC; Ramsay, J. R. 1883 report of Seminole mission, G, letter 47, AIC.Google Scholar

32 Reid, to Wilson, J. L. 12 Apr. 1854, 12–1, AIC; Hamilton to Dear Brother [Lowrie, Walter?], 26 Feb. and 18 Feb. 1847, in “More Letters,” ed. Anderson, 55–56, 59; note 12, above; Burtt, report on soldier boys, A, letter 334, AIC; Irvin, “Journal,” 140–41; Harmon, Henry Spalding to Mr. and Mrs. Bridges, 5 May 1840, MS Sp 15, in PHS. On republicanism and Presbyterians, Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, esp. 121–38.Google Scholar

33 Lowrie, Walter to Mackey, G. D. 7 May 1856, A, AIC; Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, ch. 7 and “Not Race, but Grace: Presbyterian Missionaries and American Indians, 1837–1893,” Journal of American History 67 (June 1980): 41–60. Cf. McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries. 41.Google Scholar

34 Discussion of La Flesche based on Coleman, “The Mission Education of Francis La Flesche.” For shorter Indian responses to BFM schools: Levi Levering, “Does It Pay to Christianize the Indian?” in American Indian Missions (New York, 1913), 6–7, in PHS; “Copy of Letter written by one of our mission girls to her Omaha mother without any help,” 1 Dec. 1862, 4–1, AIC; speech by “full blood” Choctaw youth,” Burtt to [Walter Lowrie?], 14 July 1857, 10–2, AIC.Google Scholar

35 Quotation from Flesche, La Middle Five, 12.Google Scholar

36 See Brenner, Elise M. “To Pray or to Be Prey: That is the Question: Strategies for Cultural Autonomy of Massachusetts Praying Town Indians,“ Ethnohistory 27 (Spring 1980): 135–52. Also McBeth, Ethnic Identity, 128–30; Brady, Margaret K. “Some Kind of Power”: Navajo Children's Skinwalker Narratives (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1984). Missionary Sue McBeth warned of sexual involvements among adult Nez Perce students, Woman's Work for Woman 10 (July 1880): 225.Google Scholar

37 About 50 boys and girls attended the Omaha school in the 1860s; at Spencer in 1853 there were 132 boys: Burtt, Omaha Mission, Annual Report (1861); Reid, to Cooper, D. H. 22 Aug. 1853, 12–1 AIC; AR (1851), 5; AR (1864), 9.Google Scholar

38 Eastman, Charles A. (Ohiyesa), From the Deep Woods to Civilization: Chapters in the Autobiography of an Indian ([1916]; Lincoln, Nebr., 1977), esp. chs. 2–5; Standing Bear, My People, chs. 13–18; Zitkala-Sa, American Indian Stories ([1921]; Lincoln, Nebr., 1985), esp. 39–99; Goodbird, Edward Goodbird the Indian: His Story ([1914]; Paul, St. Minn., 1985), esp. ch. 4; Udall, Louise ed., Me and Mine: The Life Story of Helen Sekaquaptewa (Tuscon, Ariz., 1969), esp. 5–15, 30–34, 91–108, 121–44, 224–44; Simmons, Leo W. ed., Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian (New Haven, Conn., 1942), chs. 5–6. This is the story of Don Talayesva; Coleman, Michael C. “Motivations of American Indian Children at Missionary and U.S. Government Schools from 1860 to 1909: A Study through Published Reminiscences” (Paper delivered at Annual Meeting of the Irish Association for American Studies, Dublin, April 1987). See also Berman, Edward H. ed., African Reactions to Missionary Education (New York, 1975).Google Scholar

39 Note 2, above. McLoughlin, for example, mentions mischievousness, resistance, enhanced pride, and, ironically, forms of enhanced anxiety, among Cherokee students, Cherokees and Missionaries, 59, 62–63, 138–43; Adams places responses within the context of adult Indian attitudes, “Federal Indian Boarding School,” chs. 5 and 6. My different time period and sources prevented me from testing Sally McBeth's convincing conclusion that twentieth-century Oklahoma Indians transformed boarding schools into “acceptable symbols of an Indian ethnic identity,” Ethnic Identity, 1 14.Google Scholar

40 Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, esp. chs. 4–7; White, Roots of Dependency, chs. 1–5; Walker, Deward E. Jr., Conflict and Schism in Nez Perce Acculturation: A Study of Religion and Politics (Pullman, Wash., 1968); Fletcher, and Flesche, La Omaha Tribe, 2: 611–42; Milner, Clyde A. II, With Good Intentions: Quaker Work among the Pawnees, Otos, and Omahas in the 1870s (Lincoln, Nebr., 1982), ch. 6; Green, The Politics of Indian Removal. Neither BFM sources nor Francis La Flesche indicate that young Indian children were as yet motivated by a desire to use knowledge of American ways to defend tribal identity.Google Scholar

41 On the issue of power, Davis, David Brion review of Gutman, Herbert G. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925, in American Historical Review 82 (June 1977): 744–45. Recent examples of historians emphasizing Indian initiative, coping strategies, and resilience: Bowden, American Indians and Christian Missions; McLoughlin, Cherokees and Missionaries; Milner, With Good Intentions; McBeth, Ethnic Identity; Axtell, Invasion Within; Brenner, “To Pray or to Be Prey”; Richter, Daniel K. “Iroquois versus Iroquois: Jesuit Missions and Christianity in Village Politics, 1642–1686,” Ethnohistory 32 (1985): 1–16; Kan, Sergei “Russian Orthodox Brotherhoods among the Tlingit: Missionary Goals and Native Response,” ibid., 32 (1985): 196–223. On BFM missionaries and Indian languages, Coleman, Presbyterian Missionary Attitudes, ch. 6, section 2.Google Scholar